


Mazes and Flame

by rufflejax



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Intrigue, Lorath, Multi, Other, R'hllor - Freeform, Red Priests, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slice of Life, Slurs, The Free Cities (ASoIaF), not in Westeros, possible romance? idk I'm still trying to decide where this is going
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25698859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufflejax/pseuds/rufflejax
Summary: Vignettes from the life of Tessa, a young Red Priestess in the Temple of Lorath. First four chapters originally posted in the r/GameOfThronesRP subreddit under the username flamebabyflame (yes, that's me). I chose to expand her story beyond the confines of the original RP and into its own series.
Kudos: 1





	1. Morning Hymns

_This I ask Thee, tell me truly, Lord of Light, as to prayer, how shall it be to you?_

The red priestess closed the door quietly in the light of dawn, sweeping her voluminous scarlet skirts out behind her to avoid closing them in the threshold for the third time that week. Down the rough-hewn stairs and into the shadows of the maze. She swung a basket on her arm. The basket was empty, but for a small pile of coins. It clinked softly as she walked.

_O Lord of Light, might one like thee teach to a friend such as I am, and through sacred Light give me support, that Good Thought may come to us._

The three novices were beginning their morning devotions, she knew. The prayers to the dawn would be spoken, giving praise to R’hllor, who is called the Lord of Light, for bringing back the dawn. They would sing of his strength, of his valor in the fight against the darkness. They would light their devotional candles, fill the braziers, and turn the red temple of Lorath into a bright womb of flame. Then, they would go about the beautiful human business of filling their bellies and cleaning the space for worshipers--few as they were--to come and ask the Lord of Light for their little favors and courtesies.

The red priestess thought that was all well and good. Worship sustains a god. But it was her sacred duty to sustain the worshipers.

_This I ask Thee, tell me truly, Lord of Light. Who upholds the earth beneath and the firmament from falling?_

The stone of Lorath had a smell of its own. It was not the sea--that, the red priestess knew, was dark and salt. She did not fear the sea, as the High Priest did, for its depths, but it made her uneasy nonetheless. Things could hide in the sea, better than in any maze. There were places in the ocean, pits and trenches that no mortal light could penetrate. The red priestess might go unto the ocean for its bounty, taking the children and initiates to search for cockles and clams along the stony shore and gathering sea grasses when creatures were short, but she would never go beyond where the seafloor disappeared into shadow.

_Who tends the waters and the plants? Who bound swiftness to winds and clouds?_

It was not right that the red priestess should have to gather food from the earth. But it was not right that stones standing for generations should still smell of wet earth and warm copper. The streets were the same stone, but the priestess walked gingerly, as though her shoes were sinking into battlefield mud. She had never been out of Lorath. She would never leave Lorath. Her place was here.

But her place was alien, and dark, and the streets wound about themselves like a snake crushing its prey.

_This I ask Thee, tell me truly, Lord of Light. Who among with whom I would speak is a faithful man, and who is a liar?_

The narrow lane turned sharply to the right, then left, then right again at a different angle, as all good mazes ought to do. Up a flight of stairs, then to the left again. The archway in front of the red priestess opened to a plaza of shadows. Even in the midday sun, it was cool and dim here, and the sun was not yet high enough to light it. The plaza was flooded with smoke from braziers and steam from food boiling or roasting on coals, readying for what morning rush it received.

The red priestess passed those stalls. She was not feeding herself. The children needed milk and fruit from Norvos, if the red priestess was lucky enough to find it. The initiates would take clean water and lily roots and the flatbread laid out to bake on the warm, dark, coppery stones of Lorath. The High Priest used beef fat and barley to soothe his aging hungers. Perhaps if someone was selling a slaughtered calf that hadn’t sold yesterday, she would buy a haunch or two.

She stopped at a stall stacked high with wheels of white dough, not yet crisped by a hot stone.

“A woman is in search of bread?” The owner of the stall was a tall man, with sharp shoulders and sunburned cheekbones that stuck out like knives. “How may I serve a woman?”

The red priestess peered up at him, smiling. “Hello, Tybero. How much?”

He pouted, always an experience. The angles of his face turned into drooping, disappointed question marks. “I should stop trying to be so polite with you, Tessa, you always rebuff my advances. A man is quite distressed by the hardness of your heart.”

She laughed. “That woman you are courting down by the docks would be distressed by the faithlessness of yours. I’m only here for the bread.”

“Courting is such a strong word. A man does not court, a man counts his options--and among them is--”

“The sweet red grape hanging in the red god’s temple,” she finished, rolling her eyes. “The bread, Tybero.”

“Very well. I’ll have your coin now, you can come back in an hour. The stones have yet to give off enough heat and I will not sell a woman dough to warm over her sacred fires. But of course a woman might stay and give me some of her sacred fire--”

She left him babbling with his bread and her coin.

_On which side is the enemy? Or is he who opposed thy blessings the enemy? How shall it be with him? Shall he be thought of as an enemy?_

The other shop owners were not as amorous. Tessa was no less cheerful--but they treated her with the delicacy with which one might approach an unbound hearth. Red priests were not common in Lorath. She had seen none beyond her own temple. A flash of red in Lorath meant red priests or blood spilled, and no Lorathi was certain which they’d rather see less. Both were equally bad for business.

The sun had risen enough to begin shyly lighting the plaza once Tessa returned to Tybero’s stall. Much to her amusement, he was tickling a pretty girl closer to his height under her fair, freckled chin.

“Ah, little wine grape!” He called over the heads of the growing crowd as she pushed her way towards him. “A man was just telling this woman, this lovely pale moon, about how very sweet your--”

“The bread, Tybero.” She held out her hands, her laden basket balanced on her round hip.

“A woman wounds a man.” He scowled and passed over the stack of hot flatbread, bound with rough twine. “Someday.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed amiably, smiling at the woman who stood by, looking as though she wished to be across the Narrow Sea at this very moment. “Thank you, Tybero.”

“A woman should make good on that someday,” Tybero grumbled turning back to his stones, as though the other woman had never existed. She took the opportunity to bolt. “A woman should not keep a man in such agony.”

“A man shouldn’t treat his customers like sweetmeats. Or wine grapes, even. Lord of Light bless you.”

Tessa heard him spit as she left the market plaza. Even Tybero, attached as he was, wasn’t immune to the mistrust of the Lorathi towards the small red temple deep within the mazes. It bothered her. Why shun the Light when there was so much darkness to be found in the city? Light, even mortal, was so rare here, in the cool shadows and alcoves of the labyrinth--one might get lost in the darkness, never to be found.

Was that what they wanted? It troubled her.

_This I ask Thee, tell me truly, Lord of Light. What artist made light and darkness? What artist made sleeping and waking?_

She climbed the steps of the temple, her shoes scuffing on the uneven stone. The smell of sweetened charcoal and incense wrapped her like a blanket. The sweat stood out on the red priestess’s skin, summoned by the heat from inside the open doors. Perhaps the elderly woman who cooked for them would make a soup today, lotus roots and dried red chile with prawns from the sandbars. Perhaps she would settle for milk and flatbread. She would take the fires from the novices after lunch, and talk to the weaver’s little daughter, the one with the club foot who she was teaching to read and do simple sums.

_Who made morning, noon and night, that call the understanding, to their duty?_


	2. Vandals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tessa deals with graffiti on the temple walls.

_Monsters._

The high priest came to her on the steps in the little back garden. She had taken her midday meal of flatbread and black chicken among the little summer sprouts, the weaver’s little clubfooted daughter at her feet. Tessa had been teaching her how to sing a song about the sunrise, and the weaver’s daughter took to it with surprising gusto.

“Priestess,” he said, after the chorus.

She rose and bowed. “Ever your servant.”

“Someone has vandalized the front of the temple.”

She froze. “Again?”

“Again.” His voice was tired.

_Murderers._

She wrapped up her meal and sent the weaver’s daughter on her way with some snippings of the temple’s sage and rosemary. “Be sure you dry the rosemary before using it,” she told the little girl. “The sun gives it sweetness.”

“Yes, priestess.” The little girl hobbled off with her treasure in tow, humming the hymn as she went. Tessa saw her to the gate.

_Demons._

By the time the priestess hauled her bucket to the twin cedar doors of the temple, the three acolytes were already hard at work, scrubbing off a crude mix of Lorathi and Low Valyrian scrawled across the sandstone in bright red paint. While the red temple stood out from the dark stone of Lorath like a flame, the markings stood out like blood.

Tessa felt her heart sink into her her stomach.

_Child-killers._

_Fiery savages._

_Shit-eaters and sodomites._

One of the initiates, a tall, fair girl with broad shoulders and a broader smile, waved at Tessa as she scrubbed a spot the priestess could never hope to reach. “Someone’s not happy with us,” she said cheerfully. “They got a little too close to the light, yes?”

Tessa smiled wanly. “Perhaps they mistook our shadow for darkness.”

“An easy mistake to make, for those who cannot see!” The initiate threw her arms wide as though giving the evening sermon. The other two chuckled.

Tessa said nothing. To laugh at this was unthinkable.

_Two coppers to fuck a red whore. Three and she’ll not burn your cock off._

Of course they would have scrawled that up there, next to _child-killers_. It was always sex. Sex and violence were inextricably intertwined in the minds of the men of Lorath. She had known that since the age of fourteen. A cock is a sword, to be sharpened on a lover and used to pierce the enemy’s womb-an instrument of pleasure turned to a weapon of humiliation. _Two coppers to fuck a red whore._ So she was not a priestess, not to them. A priestess was celibate, veiled, constantly self-flagellating, self-abnegating. A priestess was not a vessel of light and warmth, a servant of fire and the sun. A priestess was blindness and shame. A priestess and a woman were both equally disposable, trinkets to smash when a man grew weary. A priestess had no name.

She scrubbed the wall violently, biting back tears of anger.

_Arsonists._

_Blood-drinkers._

_Two coppers to fuck a red whore._


	3. The Priestess and the Sailor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tessa takes some of the neighborhood children down to go seining and fishing -- but an unpleasant surprise awaits her.
> 
> Content notes for sexual harassment, mentions of slavery, and attempted assault.

_Against cruelty, make a stand, you who would make sure of the rewards of the Lord of Light, to whose company the righteous man belongs._

The morning of the full moon, Tessa took the children down to the wharf to gather shellfish.

The High Priest had promised to take on someone new to do the chores the thin-lipped woman who cooked for them objected to. He had been promising that since the last full moon. He would likely promise it until the moon came down. There couldn’t be that many people in Lorath who weren’t so short of coin that they wouldn’t take on an odd job--even for the temple. Tessa suspected he hadn’t started asking.

She wouldn’t complain. She rarely complained. Though her morning devotions were often cut short by market or sweeping some nonexistent dust off the front steps before the great cedar doors, it was another form of service. _All men are slaves to R’hllor_ , the High Priest had told her, as she sniffled in the back garden at six years old. She had heard other children laughing somewhere beyond the walls of the temple. But her place was there, pulling weeds from the herbs that would wreath the altars in sweet, pungent smoke. _All men serve best in the capacity they were granted. You’d do best to learn that sooner, rather than later. You were purchased with coin, I was purchased with blood--we both serve the Lord of Light, in the end. Better to be here in the light than running free in the darkness._

And so the priestess served as a nursemaid. But even that was worship. To tend the small flames in each child, slave or free--now that was sacred. Little Cayn was barely four, but could recite the night benediction almost perfectly. Ossy had no interest in the ceremony, but was quickly learning the cook’s trade--and might even surpass her, given how sour she looked every time the wisp of a girl left her kitchen with some new knowledge. Even the weaver’s clubfooted little daughter, though she couldn’t scramble up the pilings to get at barnacles or keep her balance in the waves to harvest the green northern mussels, could sit with the basket and sing to keep their spirits up. Tessa had a soft spot for the girl. So soon after learning the Lorathi alphabet, she was already yearning to write her own hymns. It was all the red priestess could do to keep her focused on sums and measurements--her father had sent her to the temple so that his daughter might keep his books, and perhaps follow him when he was gone. The love of writing he considered an unfortunate accident.

“No one will summon a lame singer,” he grumbled once, within Tessa’s earshot. “I will not have my daughter limping around the Princes’ courts like some freak.”

Tessa supposed that having her limp through the streets with a small crowd of other children was acceptable. So the weaver’s daughter had giddily joined her troupe on their way to the harbor, taking the other handle of Ossy’s bushel basket.

_When shall I know whether ye have power, O Lord of Light, over everyone whose destructiveness is a menace to me?_

The younger children ran screaming into the waves as soon as they reached the pebbled shore. Ossy and the weaver’s daughter put together the seining net while Tessa took a small knife and began to work on the oysters on the nearby boulders surrounding a tide pool.

She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t feel the tap on her shoulder at first.

The third time it happened, she spun around. “Ossy, if this is about the seining net--oh.”

The sailor stepped back, smiling slightly lopsided. “A man hopes a woman will forgive him. But a woman is attempting to chip a rock spur off, and not an oyster.”

“Oh.” She blinked and turned to look back at the rock, then laughed. “So I am. Thank you.”

He made an exaggerated bow. “It is a man’s pleasure. Might a man join a woman to gather oysters? A man has not eaten since sunrise, and a woman could use the help.”

“Of course,” she said politely, moving slightly to the side.

He was a good oyster-partner, at first. He hummed a little as he worked--something that sounded like a fisherman’s song. Tessa found herself growing warmer towards him.

_But these that are of an evil dominion, of evil deeds, evil words, evil Self, and evil thought, Liars, the Other goeth to meet them with evil food; in the House of Darkness they shall be meet inhabitants._

She thought she was imagining it things. His hand would brush up against hers as he pulled away an oyster, or his elbow would make a quick little jab into her breast. Tessa did not complain. Tessa rarely complained. She had worked with enough children to recognize a mistake.

And then, as he slurped down his most recent acquisition, he winked at her.

“They are saying in the streets that a new sign has been hung on the red temple.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.

“I’m sure you do,” he said, cheerfully. She flinched at the sudden drop in formality. “ _Two coppers to fuck a red whore,_ no?”

“There are no temple prostitutes in Lorath,” she snapped. “Just myself, the High Priest, and the initiates.”

“Do all of them have such pretty tits?” Tessa backed up against the rocks, and he laughed.

“I have children to attend to,” she said, her voice feeling as small as her stature. The sailor stood head and shoulders above her. “If you want my oysters, you can take them and go.”

“Of course I don’t want your oysters. I want to see what’s under that red dress, priestess.” His smile was hungry. “If you like, I even have three coppers."

Tessa’s blood was rushing in her ears. Her knife was frozen in her hand. _The children,_ she thought mechanically, her eyes darting to the shoreline where Ossy was wrestling with Cayn and making a grand show of losing. _I can’t let him get to the children--_

“Priestess! PRIESTESS!”

_Can my soul count on anyone for help? Who is there found for my herd, who for myself a protector, indeed, at my call other than the Flame and thyself, O Lord of Light?_

Cedra, the initiate, the tall girl with the broad shoulders and the broad face, stood on the pier above the priestess and the sailor, feet planted, hands on hips. The whorls of flame on her face stood out like sunbeams in the morning light, like the anger of an avenging spirit.

The sailor scowled.

“Fuck off,” he snapped, “unless, of course, you plan on joining us.”

“You’ll take no woman and be happy for it,” Cedra said coldly. “This man is bothering you, yes, priestess?”

She said nothing. It was enough.

Cedra made her way off the pier, her feet thudding on the wood and stone like execution drums. The sailor had not moved--so she made him move, none too gently, with her shoulder.

“It was stupid to go alone with the children, after the scrawl on the temple,” she said, wrapping one arm around Tessa’s shoulder and guiding her away from the tidal pool, ignoring the sailor as though he had never existed. “You should bring someone with you, yes? A friend.”

“They normally go away after a feel,” she said, disbelieving. “Most men don’t want to fuck a statue. They just get angry if you fight back.”

Cedra made a noise of disgust. “They should not be touching a priestess of the Lord of Light in such a manner, not unless she desires it.”

“But they do. We are not priestesses to them--”

“I know this. We are red whores.” Cedra’s strong grip made Tessa realise just how much she was shaking. “If we wore green, we would be green whores. If we worshipped the Black Goat, we would be goat whores. I wonder what it is they call actual whores.”

Tessa said nothing, merely leaned against Cedra’s hip. Cedra was kind enough to stay silent until the children came in.

Ossy was the first to notice. “Look, priestess! We caught some coins in the ocean, and Hali swears she found a--priestess? Why are your eyes red?”

“I hurt myself on the rocks,” she said, before Cedra could open her mouth. “I’ll be all right.”

Ossy gave her a look of disbelief, but continued to tell her all about the things that had collected in the seining net. The weaver’s little daughter said nothing at all, but squeezed her hand as they trooped back up the maze-like roads to the temple. And Cedra, sweet Cedra, never stopped holding her, not until they were safely through the cedar doors and in the bright, inviolate sanctuary of the temple.

It was only then she turned to face Tessa.

“We serve only one man, and that is the Lord of Light,” she said, her hands clasped around the priestess’s. “Remember this. We are his slaves. Not theirs. His.”

“All men serve best in the capacity they were granted,” Tessa said dully.

“Are you in need of help with the afternoon devotions, priestess?”

“No. I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

Cedra did not argue, merely bowed and left, her footsteps heavy and echoing against the sandstone.

Only there, in the shadows of the holy fires, did Tessa allow herself to begin sobbing.

_Let the helper hear the ordinance, she that is created to bring deliverance._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter four years ago, after dealing with some of the fallout from my own experiences with sexual harassment and assault. May we all find a Cedra to help us through.


	4. Morning Glow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tessa recovers from her ordeal at the shoreline.

Tessa was unwell for several days. They treated her for fever.

Cedra brought her soups, hot broths made from meat scraps and thickened with barley. Tessa left most of them untouched, along with the bitter teas made from willow bark and valerian root. The smell made her lightheaded. She kept a single taper burning in her sleeping cell--and when that burned out, she didn’t bother to replace it.

The last time this had happened, the man had been a Braavosi boatswain, and he had left marks on her upper arms. She had spent a week in bed with the same fever. The High Priest had let her be--but then, it was just the two of them, plus the temple slaves. No one would have bothered her without his say-so.

Unfortunately, that was no longer the case.

On the fifth day, Cedra threw open the door, torch in hand.

“Up, priestess! Get up!”

Tessa groaned and turned over on her pallet, trying to shield her eyes from the light.

“Priestess, you’re shirking your duties. The high priest cannot sing the evening hymns for the sixth time.”

“I’m sick. Go away, Cedra.”

“I do not think you’re sick anywhere but in the heart, priestess.”

“I have a fever. I need to sleep.”

“You’re ashamed about a pig calling himself a sailor. You think it’s your fault. You don’t have a fever.” Cedra dropped the torch into the ring outside the door and put her hands on her hips. “Get up or I will make you get up.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.” Cedra took a deep breath and began to sing. “ _Morning glow, morning glow, starts to glimmer, when you know--_ ”

“Stop it.”

“ _\--winds of change are set to blow, and sweep this whole land through--_ ”

“Cedra, I need to sleep--”

“ _Morning glow is long past due!_ ”

“Stop!” Tessa shrieked, reaching down and throwing the first thing she could find at Cedra--a half-empty wooden cup. Cedra easily sidestepped it and continued singing, while moving towards Tessa’s bed.

“ _Morning glow, by your light--_ ” Cedra stooped down and lifted Tessa over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Put me down!”

“Hush, priestess. If you’re going to fight like a child, I’m going to treat you like one. It is a good thing you’re already dressed, yes?”

Tessa gave up.

“ _We can make the new day bright--_ ”

Cedra carried the red priestess all the way down the hall and to the winding stairs leading to the antechamber of the sanctuary. Though it must have been difficult, she showed no sign of strain, continuing to sing the hymn in her low, powerful voice. Through the fog of shame, Tessa found herself vaguely impressed.

“ _\--and the phantoms of the night will fade into the past--_ ”

The initiate did not take her to the sanctuary, as she expected. Instead, Cedra carried her to the kitchen where the tight-faced cook was glaring at a pot of potato and leek soup as though it had personally insulted her. She turned her cold gaze up just as Cedra dumped Tessa unceremoniously onto the rough kitchen bench.

“Oh.” She pulled out a trencher and began ladling soup into it. “You’re awake.”

“Yes.” Tessa attempted to smooth out the wrinkles in her skirts to no avail. “More or less.”

“You should eat. You’ve been wasting my broths for the past few days. No sense in having the only red priestess in Lorath waste away in the dark.” She slammed the trencher down on the table in front of Tessa. Tessa winced. “Eat. It’s still hot.”

“You will eat, yes, priestess?” Cedra was uncertain, for the first time since she’d opened the door.

Tessa managed a wan smile. “Yes. I’ll eat.”

“Do you swear it?”

“Of course.”

“Good, because I am leaving you in the tender care of Tya until you finish your whole bowl and can come up for evening prayers. You will make sure she eats, yes?”

The thin-lipped woman snorted. “Strange days when I have to treat a red priestess like a child,” she said, but she nodded.

“Very good,” Cedra said cheerfully. “I will see you in the sanctuary, priestess. The weaver sent a goat kid for sacrifice--his little daughter seems to think you are dying and he is praying for a miracle. She will not leave the house until she knows you are well or in the ground, he says, and so he has sent an offering. Very begrudgingly.”

Tessa dropped her spoon. “Where did you hear that?”

“Someone had to feed us, priestess. While you were curled up in the dark, the world went on without you. It is not such a good place without you, no, but it goes on all the same.” She gave Tessa a look. “You should know this better than I. Perhaps you should be the initiate, yes?”

Tessa had nothing to say to that. Cedra took the opportunity to march out of the kitchen, leaving Tessa alone with Tya and her soups. It was silent, save for the bubbling of the pot and the crackling of the fire.

And then Tessa began to laugh.

It started out as a disturbance in her throat bubbling out of her lips, and soon grew to an uncontrollable torrent. Tears poured from her eyes and she thumped the table, gasping for air. Tya looked alarmed, but said nothing.

“She’s right, you know,” Tessa said, in-between gasps. “She--she had to carry me down the stairs and--buy the vegetables--and--and--ah, Lord, she’s right. Imagine Tybero’s face!”

Tya blinked, clearly attempting to decide whether it was worth it to respond.

Tessa took a deep breath and finished Cedra’s song, “ _Morning glow is here. At last._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Prayers included in this work are inspired by the Holy Zend Avesta and also by songs from the musical Pippin. Yes, it's a bit of an odd mix. -Jax


End file.
